Some problems of Contemporary Classical Music

Recently I published this article in Russian, let it be in English as well.

I was asked to state the most acute, in my opinion, problems of the art of music. Here they are.

All music, except experimental music of the twentieth century, is a moral category above all. Nobody wants to understand that – nor musicians neither critics and audience. Today there are no real artists in music which means there is no music. There is senseless musical noise, various kinds of mechanical reproduction of sounds of different strength, speed and loudness. There is no one to transmit music today and there is nobody to perceive. This happens due to the loss of a mature developed personality in a modern society that has a high artistic taste.

Today the society has degenerated to a mass consisting of immature, low-cultural impudent infantils. In modern society, there is a complete lack of artistic taste, both on stage and in the public. A humanitarian catastrophe befell the completely degraded post Soviet society of simplified humans. Commercialism killed Western society, as a society of free thinking individuals. The minimal likeness of the artistic image is accepted by the listeners for the “interpretation”. The most devastating harm was done by the corrupt world system of competitions and distribution of financial resources inside the corrupted teaching society, and within the framework of the corporation of artisans who put music on service to the music business. Music agents, festivals, executives of the music industry driven only by market rules and turn over logic ruining art. Recording industry completely eroded professional criteria. Philosophy and aesthetics of performance has not been developing for more than a hundred years. The aesthetic questions of performing in general are beyond the consciousness of the so-called performing musicians. They also do not know the theory and the fundamentals of composition. Do not own the analysis of music form. Even at such a basic level, the modern musicians world is unprofessional. The performers have no idea about the cultural and national traditions of the composers they perform, they do not know the history of music, they do not understand the basics of the musical language. Pseudo-emotional agony on stage is accepted by the public for sign of creativity. This is the animal level of music playing. External tasteless artificial decorations, which are not relevant to content, are perceived by both the public and critics as “interpretation”. Petty bourgeois artisans-strings evoke tenderness and response in smug, stupid, moss-brained philistine listeners. All the performers have been copying for a hundred years already those pseudo-samples that the so-called music industry pushes them. They have no thoughts of their own. At the other extreme is a pseudo-intellectual senseless manual perfection, enthralled by a society of savage neophytes who accept this abracadabra for “the highest form of intellectual music”. All this applies to solo and orchestral music.
Without changing consciousness in the world musical community, no attempt to create genuine artistic values ​​is possible. Without changing and breaking the system of musical education, educating new generations of people of subtle artistic taste, dismantling the machine for destroying music – the “music business” – music and society will not revive and culture will never return to our world.